This is a repository copy of Exploring Women’s Mutuality in Confronting Care-Precarity: ‘Care Accounts’ – a Conceptual Tool. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/146129/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Raw, A orcid.org/0000-0002-5896-4609 and McKie, L (2020) Exploring Women’s Mutuality in Confronting Care-Precarity: ‘Care Accounts’ – a Conceptual Tool. Sociology, 54 (1). pp. 53-69. ISSN 0038-0385 https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519856236 © 2019, The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper published in Sociology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ 1 Exploring women’s mutuality in confronting care-precarity: ‘Care Accounts’ – A conceptual tool Abstract Exploring scholarship in reciprocity, gift and gendered social capital, and drawing upon research and analysis across 15 years (2003-2018), this paper offers fresh theoretical insights into everyday practices of low-paid women with care responsiBilities. Framing women’s pragmatic mutuality in confronting precarity in their care arrangements, we propose the concept of ‘Care Accounts’, articulating a practice of collaborative workplace problem solving. Women lodge and generate good will with colleagues By swapping or extending their shifts to cover for each other; generating capacity and continuity of care across unexpected family events or crises. Systems of reciprocal workplace mutuality – care/work micro networks – build as women pool their capacity to respond. We highlight, however, an ensnarement effect of Care Accounts, as they further lock women into low paid joBs. We suggest priority attention must be given to the prevalence and urgency of ‘care- precarity’ and the dereliction in care planning that Care Accounts reveal. Keywords Care Accounts, Care Precarity, Feminist, FlexiBility, Gendered Ensnarement, Interdependency, Mutuality, Social Capital, Theory, Women Journal: Sociology Lead Author: Dr Anni Raw, Research Fellow: POLIS (School of Politics and International Studies) and Visiting Fellow: FAHACS (School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies) - University of Leeds Co-Author: Professor Linda McKie, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social and Political Science, University of EdinBurgh and Visiting Professor in Gender Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki Corresponding author details: Dr Anni Raw POLIS, Social Sciences Building University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT Email: [email protected] 2 Exploring women’s mutuality in confronting care-precarity: ‘Care Accounts’ – A conceptual tool Introduction This article discusses theoretical perspectives on women’s patterns of mutuality, when addressing the ever-present tensions in balancing working and caring responsibilities. Amidst recent political and economic trends: creeping privatisation of essential services and cuts to puBlic sector care budgets; and with a rapidly ageing demographic, managing care is an issue of continually growing urgency (Fraser, 2016). We highlight that care needs are by necessity a constant social and political landscape; one, in the aBsence of adequate support, still tended largely by women without financial recompense, and where multiple drivers towards a ‘citizen worker’ norm (Lister, 2003; Orloff 1993) introduce increasing day-to-day complexity. Previous scholarship has used a policy lens to discuss how low paid women workers balance caring and working roles; and valuaBle feminist work has highlighted the narrow spaces in which women still must manoeuvre (Fraser, 2016). This reality persists despite indefatigable work committed across the years to developing and achieving work life policies to support equality for women in the domestic and work spheres (Tinson, Aldridge and Whitman, 2016: 25-32). In light of a sharpening reality in which societies still fail to ensure citizens’ care needs are provided for without disproportionate disadvantage to any population group (women, those on low income, immigrant and other marginalised groups, to whom this responsiBility still currently falls), we pay attention here to the suBjectivities, coalitions and networks created By women in the daily organisation of time, work and care. Reviewing research and analysis across 10 projects and over 15 years, undertaken in the UK and Finland (scholarship summarised in Bowlby et al, 2010), we oBserved that women’s practical solutions present some common themes, sometimes drawing on complex social relational patterns. Underpinned By constrained financial 3 options for the majority of women, we locate patterns in three para-financial Budgeting areas: of time and capacity, of giving and organising care, and of social capital with colleagues. The way that these three aspects interlock has led us to the concept of ‘Care Accounts’, which forms the focus of this article. The notion of ‘Care Accounts’ therefore refers here to a workplace social phenomenon, in which women Build and exchange their good will and capacity with co-workers by covering each others’ shifts, when their colleagues’ precariously balanced care solutions fail, leaving them otherwise stranded. The literatures we use as interpretative tools for Care Accounts include ideas on ‘flexiBility’ in workplace policy discourses (Zeytinoglu and Muteshi, 2000). In the Care Accounts context we refocus this discussion to argue for our preferred term of ‘responsive capacity’: to reframe the current notion of flexibility, descriBing rather women’s own capacity to ‘flex’ according to the conflicting demands of paid work and care responsiBilities. We draw also on scholarship exploring reciprocity and gift, and their motivations and flows (Gouldner, 1960; Offer, 2012; Vaughan, 2004); discussions of ‘capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986; 1980; Portes, 1998; Skeggs, 1997); feminist commentaries on women’s everyday care and work practices, and applications of social theory analysis in this context (Fraser, 2013; Huppatz, 2009; Reay, 2004). We Borrow from Ahmed’s (2004) work on ‘affective economies’; and Butler’s (2009, 2012) and Worth’s (2016) feminist, relational analysis of precarity and interdependency Conceptual tools drawn from everyday practice This text is a theoretical exploration, inspired By research and suBsequent analyses conducted in research projects across almost two decades. Early ideas were stimulated By European Social Fund (ESF) work in 2004 (McKie et al. 2004), with women working in low paid food retail in Scotland, exploring evidence that women employees, in a sector with a predominately female workforce, appeared reluctant to apply for promotion or develop careers. The research data we draw upon is 4 predominately qualitative; semi structured interviews with workers and managers, and oBservations in workplaces. The scholarship focussed on a specific sector: involving women in low paid part time or shift work in shops of various sizes, and in a specifically UK and European retail context. Respondents were current or former carers, with caring responsiBilities ranging from child to elder care. A quarter had multiple care responsiBilities including comBining care for children, a sick partner, elders, grandchildren or in some cases neighbours (BowlBy et al., 2010). There was amongst these women a strong sense that ‘family comes first’, whilst also ‘the store must be staffed’ (Backett-MilBurn et al., 2008, p. 481, 486). These tensions recurred in our ongoing scholarship focussing on women’s work life issues in a range of sectors and across the age and career stage spectrum (McKie et al., 2009) . Emerging patterns of everyday relational pragmatism in these specific laBour contexts led us to develop the conceptual tool discussed here: our aim was to explore theoretical dimensions explaining, in sociological terms, how these and indeed many other women are routinely anticipating and managing caring emergencies arising while they are in the workplace (McKie et al., 2009). The suBsequent interdisciplinary conceptualisation of Care Accounts presented here may Be, we propose, not context- or project(s)-bound, but of more general relevance; and we seek through our theoretical exploration to train focus on a series of questions reaching Beyond the scope of this article, where further discussion may gauge any wider applicability and relevance of this conceptual tool. Conceptualising care Leading discussions on care have emphasised the social policy and welfare context, work-life balance, or organisational well-being and occupational health (Fraser, 2013). Much scholarship in the field is predominantly policy focussed (HoBson et al., 2011; Lewis, 2009; RuBery et al., 2016) with, we suggest, too little reference to the narratives of women’s everyday realities to enaBle clear- sighted analysis. Here, we focus upon an everyday practice in the